VMware Intros VMware Horizon: Refreshed, Renamed, Repackaged

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VMware on Wednesday renamed its VMware View virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) technology as VMware Horizon and introduced its new VMware Horizon Suite, which brings together several related technologies into an integrated VDI solution.

Both existing VMware VDI technology and technology from some recent acquisitions have been brought together in the new VMware Horizon Suite, said Ben Goodman, lead evangelist for end-user computing at VMware.

The development of the VMware Horizon Suite comes as a new generation of IT users are bringing new devices running a wide range of new applications to the business environment, Goodman said.

"New users increasingly expect to access their apps from anywhere," he said. "Point solutions don't work. But, businesses tend to buy point solution after point solution after point solution, and that just doesn't work. To succeed, they need to transform their apps to run as a service."

VMware Horizon Suite was developed with the recognition that users need to remotely run business apps from any device, Goodman said.

That need led to the move by VMware away from using the letter "v" at the beginning of most of its products to adopting the "Horizon" moniker for its VDI offerings, Goodman said.

"There's no 'v,'" he said. "We're focused on the end-user here."

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Horizon, which is being introduced a week before VMware's annual partner conference in Las Vegas, consists of three different products.

The first is VMware Horizon View, previously known as VMware View. Horizon View is the company's software for developing virtual desktops that allow business users to access corporate resources without the need for physical PCs.

VMware on Wednesday unveiled Horizon View 5.2, an updated release of the VDI software that for the first time allows hardware rendering of 3-D graphics, Goodman said. "So now, users can extend VDI to new use cases such as engineering and CAD/CAM applications," he said.

Also new is what Goodman termed gesturing capabilities, which provides Windows desktop products re-rendered as touch-friendly applications for Apple or Google Android tablet PCs. For instance, Goodman said, users who run an application like Microsoft Word on a tablet would find the menu bar larger and easier to touch than without the gesturing capability.